RE: Improving browsing and discoverability in the Packages Menu

[Drew Adams]

> This would be nice to fix. `finder-known-keywords' looks like the
> place to start. Package filtering is only indirectly connected to the
> value of that variable, though.
> 
> Filtering is done on keywords actually found in the packages. If
> package authors used `auto-insert' when creating their packages,
> they would be prompted to add keywords from `finder-known-keywords'.
> That leaves a lot of wiggle room for the insertion of random keywords.

I'm not sure what you meant by the last part, so this comment might
be unrelated to your post.  But I would like to remind us all that
`finder' functionality is not limited to the keywords found in
`finder-known-keywords'.

Users can use any keywords they like in their library headers.
I would not like to see `finder.el' gravitate toward imposing some
particular set of keywords or expecting only some particular set.

> In order to make filtering useful, it seems like it would be
> worthwhile fleshing out the taxonomy of `finder-known-keywords',
> and enforcing it -- ie, keywords not in that variable would be
> ignored by package filtering.

I'm not sure I would object to something like that being done only
"by package filtering".  But I would object to changing the point
of `finder.el' so that it generally becomes more rigid in that way.

Even for only "package filtering", I have the question of why.
Why should package filtering be limited to some predefined list
of keywords?  Just why should "keywords not in that variable...
be ignored by package filtering"?